


An Apple, Cleft in Two, Is Not More Twin

by themantlingdark



Series: Sent [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Fluff and Smut, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2019-09-28
Packaged: 2020-10-29 15:48:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20799113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themantlingdark/pseuds/themantlingdark
Summary: Set immediately after "Sent." More of the soft fools and their feelings.





	An Apple, Cleft in Two, Is Not More Twin

Shoes, stockings, jackets, and ties were draped over the back of the sofa or lying in heaps below its arms.

Crowley’s breast was pink where Aziraphale had been caressing it for hours as he’d recited the play. The angel’s hand had strayed from Crowley’s belly to trace the lines of his neck and throat, then descended just slightly and gradually stretched the neckline of his shirt, wandering beneath the cotton to brush the pads of his fingers over the collar bones and sternum, coming teasingly close to Crowley’s nipples, but never grazing them, being stopped by the knit. Crowley had considered performing a minor miracle that would have enabled the fabric to give endlessly, encouraging Aziraphale’s right hand to travel farther south, but he hadn’t wanted to derail the flow of words. 

The tune to which Aziraphale had sung Feste’s final song was the one Crowley remembered. He hadn’t heard it done properly since the early seventeenth century. He hadn’t heard every line delivered with the right emphasis by someone who got all the jokes in at least half as long. It felt like running into an old friend.

The occasions on which he was truly able to revisit the bits and pieces of his existence were scarce. Every now and again an appraiser or archaeologist would unearth something he’d loved and, a decade or so later, he’d be able to visit it in the museum where it had been freshly entombed. Vivid paintings hung suffocating behind glass in cold stone buildings, rendered dull by dim artificial lights. To see them brought so low took all the joy out of reunions. 

Aziraphale’s left hand had been playing in Crowley’s hair, combing it back and then raking it sideways so there would be reason to smooth it out again. He was patting and tweaking it now, restoring it to the state he’d found it in, and cocking his head to listen as if tracking a mouse.

Crowley followed suit.

“Raining again,” Crowley said.

“Yes,” Aziraphale agreed, looking from Crowley’s bare feet, which were propped on the arm of the sofa, back up to his hair, taking measure. “Not about to chuck you out into it.” Aziraphale stared up at the ceiling, narrowed his eyes, and hummed.

A moment later Crowley heard a thud and some dry scuffing.

“Have you got a cat up there you’ve been keeping from me?” Crowley asked.

“No, dear, just making things more comfortable for us… if you’d like to stay, that is. Of course you don’t ha-"

“‘_Like to,’_” Crowley laughed, shaking his head and rolling his eyes. “Like nothing better, angel.”

Crowley watched Aziraphale’s face leap as if pulled by strings, every feature tightening and climbing higher. He felt Aziraphale’s belly flex against his cheek as the muscles tried to slow and flatten a deep, swiftly-drawn breath.

“Oh,” Aziraphale said.

The angel was still smiling. Wider by the second.

“What’s got you so giddy?” Crowley asked, only teasing, but wholly wanting to hear it.

“Just,” the angel shook his head and bit his lip, beaming all the while. “You. This. Our picnic. Today. Everything. And you’re no better, by the way.” 

“No?”

“No. You haven’t stopped grinning once since…”

“This afternoon,” Crowley finished. “Well,” he began, but his gaze went hazy. His mouth stilled around the beginnings of an excuse, open and smiling, but silent.

Of course he was grinning. Only a fool could have managed anything less. 

They were soaring on a rush that hadn’t yet worn off. Their whole bodies felt all the time like they’d just met with the feather-light brush of fingers over bare ribs. That first shivering, electric gasp of being tickled before the flinch and the shriek kicked in. 

Back in Crowley’s bed, they’d giggled and scrambled their way into something two completely inexperienced teenagers would have written off as entirely incompetent. Shirts open, but not off. Bare breasts and bellies pressed together but otherwise neglected. Pajama bottoms still on and still all the way up, teasing like a veil or curtain, dulling their bodies just enough that the frantic shifting of their hips was able to go on for more than one minute, but not more than two. Their kisses had been distracted, messy, and badly aimed in addition to being broken up by laughter. It had been an absolute bungle from start to finish, and absolutely perfect.

“Shall we?” Aziraphale asked, giving a final, settling pair of pats to Crowley’s chest.

“I think so,” Crowley said, swinging himself off the sofa and making for the stairs in what was meant to be a slow, straight line but was instead a careening rush that set them both laughing and had the angel reaching up to grip the back of Crowley’s belt, steadying him as they went up the steps.

A candle flared to life as they hit the second floor and Crowley froze, said a sharp “no,” and sent the room into darkness.

“No more fire in the bookshop, angel. Not ever.”

“_Oh_. Yes. Sorry, my dear. Habit. Stupid of me.” Aziraphale snapped his fingers and the room filled with light from no visible source.

“Much better,” Crowley sighed.

Everything was better. The angel’s bout of blind redecorating had finally put a proper bed in the place. More than big enough for the both of them, tucked into the corner of the room so that there were windows on two sides. Not a standard size. Or placement. They’d be lying on it diagonally, if the position of the pillows was anything to go on.

The second floor was for the items the angel was completely unwilling to part with. Books of prophecy, overwhelmingly, collected by someone who desperately wanted answers. But there were a few deliberately fictional first editions too. Wilde. Isherwood. Forster. Woolf. There were letters from authors, all grateful for the kind, almost alarmingly insightful words of praise and encouragement the angel had sent their way. Battered paperbacks of favorites that the angel read over and over in order to spare the older copies’ fragile spines were normally stacked on top of tables. Now the whole collection had been condensed onto shelves on tracks that could roll close together to free up the walls. An overdue update. Crowley missed the flashing gilt titles and worn leather covers, but a better view was in the works. There was finally a place for the angel to rest. The most precious tome within these walls, if the idiot would only get his nose out of his books long enough to know it. 

“I made it quite soft, as you’re so slim,” Aziraphale said, sitting on the end of the bed and testing the mattress, pressing his hands down into the pillow-top and bouncing slightly. “But I can still adjust it. Just say the word.”

“Thank you,” Crowley said, then sat beside Aziraphale, took the angel’s left hand, and kissed his palm. “May I?”

“Of course.”

Crowley’s plan to have the angel in naught but his skin in under a minute derailed at the wrist.

He got the cuff of Aziraphale’s left sleeve open, saw the smooth, thin skin on the underside of his arm, and spent five minutes kissing his way up to the crook of the angel’s elbow, pausing to set his cheek to the fine, translucent flesh, seeing the faint, fluttering blue of the veins below.

The color set Crowley thinking of symbols. Of sky, sea, sorrow, and soul. Of sincerity and depth. Of heavenly grace. Mary’s color, poor girl. Nothing of her or of Aziraphale could be felt in the hollow of heaven now. All the grace left in the world was sitting on this bed, letting a very backward demon suck a bruise onto his skin. The color of a berry, or a baby’s birthmark. 

“I saw one of our greats a couple weeks ago,” Crowley remembered. “Didn’t have time to stop. Completely slipped my mind with all the…”

“Armageddon.”

“Yes. Sorry. I should have rung you.”

“Shh, it’s all right,” Aziraphale soothed, bending to kiss the top of Crowley’s head and staying to breathe in the scent of his hair while he waited for the rest.

“She was stepping onto a bus. I could barely move. Just as well. Couldn’t have come up with a thing to say that wouldn’t have come off as completely insane.”

“I expect not.”

“Threw a heap of good luck at the whole double-decker. Didn’t want to try anything too specific and risk the miracle missing her if my aim was off.”

“That was well done.”

“No matter how many times it happens, I’m always confused for a moment when they don’t look like you.”

“That’s how it goes for me too, but with you,” Aziraphale smiled. “I expect gold eyes and red hair.”

Contrary to popular belief, Noah was in the ninth circle. Crowley had never been low enough to know it. The man had been given 950 years of life. A long time to regret and repent. But he’d remained proud. He’d defended his ship from his fellow man and let them all drown, delighted at having been told he was chosen, eager to believe in his own goodness, feeling no need to earn it. He’d sent spears and arrows sailing into the breasts of parents who’d tried to hand their babies up to safety.

Crowley had gone swooping over the sea, scooping up as many survivors as he could manage and hiding them on the ark behind the elephants and impalas. Aziraphale had been on his heels the whole time, wide-eyed and white, taking every tiny, shivering body Crowley had handed over to him, unable to let go. Unwilling. He'd had two babies under each arm, and his legs were bent to make seats where two children each could sit on his calves as if on rocking horses. 

Whatever stuff Crowley was made of was soft, thin, and easily rent. After two weeks spent nursing babies nearly non-stop, she’d sagged to the straw that was strewn across the floor of the ark and succumbed to exhaustion. Aziraphale had known that no angel needed rest. The change the fall had wrought was one that worried him, but the cry of hungry babes was not one he was able to resist either. 

Crowley had awakened to find Aziraphale smoother, rounder, and naked from the waist, sitting cross-legged on the floor with two babies cradled against her flanks by her forearms and their heads cupped in her palms, holding their lips to her breasts.

“’M… I’m. I was,” Crowley had rasped, and a glass of water and loaf of bread had appeared at her side. She’d nodded her thanks and stopped to eat and drink. “I’m thwarting it,” she’d continued. “The plan, I mean. _ Her _ plan. Noah’s plan. Whoever’s. Whatever,” she’d flapped her hand. “Demonic... duty.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale had nodded. “And I’m… feeding the hungry.”

“Right. _ Yes_.”

Crowley had snapped her fingers and multiplied the bread for the children old enough to feed themselves, then added bowls of nuts and fruit to their lunch.

In five thousand years, the pair had crossed paths with the descendants of their orphans only half a dozen times.

“What did she look like?” Aziraphale asked, murmuring the words into Crowley’s hair as he rubbed Crowley’s knee. 

“Small. Petite, I mean, not malnourished or anything. Rectangular face. Thick, wavy hair. Beautiful balayage--oak at the tips and coffee at the roots. Eyes... like strong tea. Freckles. Someone who tans rather than burns. Fit. Good shoes. Smart clothes. Incredible perfume. Thierry Mugler’s _ Angel,_ no less, if you can believe that.” They both laughed. “Seemed to be doing all right--at the surface, anyway.” 

“Where?”

“Three blocks south of my flat.”

“I’ll have to keep an eye out.”

“Mm, and a nose.”

Crowley was still curled over Aziraphale’s forearm, holding it up, with his lips an inch from the skin, breathing softly against it. Lost and tired again. 

“Let’s rest a bit, hmm?” the angel said, and Crowley gave a slow nod. 

They crawled up the bed and tugged down the covers. Shucked off trousers, shirts, and pants and sent them sailing toward the armchair. Shuffled their way under the sheets. Sagged with twin sighs and let the tension leach from their limbs until they felt boneless.

After half an hour of near-napping, Crowley hummed and roused himself slightly, realizing he was completely comfortable, but that things could still be improved. He rolled over and draped an arm and a leg over Aziraphale, who slid an arm under Crowley’s neck in turn. 

They lay quietly petting each other, pressing small, unconscious kisses onto any skin within reach of their lips, tracing abstract loops onto each other with their fingertips while the rain played lightly on the window panes. 

Aziraphale could feel the beat of his friend’s heart as each pulse sent Crowley’s cock ticking against him, tapping warm and sticky against his hip. 

“Feeling better?” Aziraphale asked.

“Mm,” Crowley nodded.

“Right,” the angel said, and rolled Crowley onto his back with one smooth turn. “Hello,” Aziraphale smiled, and popped a loud, smacking kiss onto Crowley’s mouth, which won him pursed lips--crushing back a smile--and a fond shake of the head.

“Ridiculous.”

“Usually,” the angel agreed, and kissed him again, nipping his lower lip and worrying it between both of his own before tipping his head and licking past Crowley’s teeth, coaxing his tongue out and sucking it softly, wishing other parts of their bodies were as welcoming and dexterous as mouths. He felt Crowley’s moan buzzing against his teeth and sucked harder, then released Crowley’s tongue lightly before pulling it back in again, feeling it glide hot and slick between his lips. It sent Crowley’s hips arching off the bed, lifting Aziraphale with them, and halted their kisses with panting and gasps. 

Crowley’s fingers were digging into the meat of Aziraphale’s shoulders, trying to pull him closer, as if their breasts could open or dissolve between them, letting everything mingle as readily as breath.

For a moment, Crowley almost felt sorry about their bodies. Fragile in all the wrong ways. Permanently middle aged. So often tired, achy, and cold. A good fit for a universe that was, with its beginning behind it and eternity ahead, in a permanent state of middle age itself. 

But, really, as middle ages went, this one was tickety-boo. Nothing was tired, cold, or achy now. They were both wide awake, tucked in a soft bed with sweat starting between their bellies. Crowley could feel Aziraphale’s cock pressing down against him, harder and heavier with every passing second and pulse of blood. There was heat from head to toe, and then a cool spot blooming on Crowley’s hip where the angel dripped. 

Crowley had always half-expected it to sting. It was holier to him than any water in a stoup. Perhaps that was why it hadn’t hurt him. He’d built his own cathedral and written himself a religion. Stolen all that was left of heaven. Allied himself with God’s only soldier, who had quit official service. They were on their own side inside and out. Could trade more than faces.

Crowley wondered if they could have survived their executions without the swap. He was about to ask for a second opinion when Aziraphale sucked a mark onto his neck that drove the thoughts right from his head, replacing them with_ angel, angel, angel. _

“Yes?” Aziraphale asked, pausing at the bend of Crowley’s shoulder, breathing the word against damp skin.

Crowley felt like a river under full sun, warm and flickering, rushing through himself. He wasn’t sure what his friend was asking--or if he’d chanted all the _ angel_s aloud. It didn’t matter in any case.

“Yes,” Crowley nodded, nearly sobbing it, arching again to drive his cock into Aziraphale’s belly, feeling the angel nod before he delivered a bruising trail of kisses that curved across Crowley's breasts, ribs, belly, and waist.

“Yes?” Aziraphale asked again, kissing the midpoint between the crest of his hip and the base of his cock.

All Crowley could see was his cathedral, looking out through stained-glass eyes down to the silly, fragile spire and the two rose windows staring back, waiting for their answer.

“Is it worship?” Crowley whispered.

“Oh, this transcends it, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” Crowley said. “Yes. _ Please._”

Crowley heard a soft “thank you” and felt a firm kiss on his inner thigh. Then another landed beside it and more did the same, trailing down like a garter until the angel’s chin hit the bed and it stopped him.

Aziraphale resumed his path on Crowley’s right thigh, kissing his way to its top and then wandering up to the crest of the hip, down the edge of the belly, and back to the dusting of red hair that was silently sparkling up at him. He kissed the base of Crowley’s cock and felt his friend’s whole body flex. Kissed it again. Skin softer than lips. Like eyelids and nipples, or the insides of wrists. Veined like a heart, stood naked and defenseless with no cage of ribs. It seemed impossible to Aziraphale that he could hold it in his mouth much as he had Crowley’s name. He licked the whole length of it and heard Crowley cry out. When he looked, Crowley’s head was thrown back and his jaw hung open, flashing the white crescent of the upper teeth. He laved the fine skin, tasting salt at the tip, feeling the firm shaft below flexing wildly now, straining with every pass of his tongue and every wish that lay hidden in Crowley’s dazed head.

Wishes easily guessed. 

He palmed Crowley’s balls, fuzzy, warm, and impossibly helpless, resting there in his hand with no bones to protect them, then curled his fingers and brushed the round shapes softly. He slid his lips slowly down the length of Crowley’s cock and heard a high, stunned, “Oh.”

“More?”

“Yes,” Crowley nodded, reaching with shaking hands to touch the angel’s hair and the shells of his ears. 

Aziraphale could see the muscles pulled taut in Crowley’s slim neck, holding his head up to let him look. Wanting to see.

Aziraphale shot him a smile with his eyes and slid his mouth down again until his lips met fur and skin, taking Crowley’s cock deep into his throat and holding it there. He hollowed his cheeks and pulled all the way off slowly, with a firm suck, turning Crowley into his own striptease, revealing his cock inch by inch, letting the pink curve of the head leave his lips with a wet pop and a thread of spit that hung glistening between the slit and his chin. 

Aziraphale wanted to see more of that. He ran his thumb up the base of Crowley’s prick, coaxing a clear, sticky bead up and out onto the crown where they both admired it for a moment before the angel licked it up and sank his mouth down again, humming this time, sending the bass notes of his voice deep into Crowley’s core. He felt the whole bed bounce as Crowley’s head hit the pillow.

He smiled to himself as he rose and descended again, sucking and swiveling until Crowley’s back arched and his breaths went short. 

“If you don’t want me to come in your mouth, you should let go now,” Crowley warned.

Aziraphale’s motions went on with no break in their rhythm.

Crowley briefly stopped breathing altogether before he bucked and sobbed, spilling out into Aziraphale’s mouth, then lifting his head weakly to see his angel’s face, finding it bright and smiling still. He was catching a stray drop of come that hung on his lower lip with the tip of his tongue and bursting it against the roof of his mouth.

“Magnolias and the sea, just like mine,” the angel murmured.

“You’re going to discorporate me,” Crowley said, convulsing with another wave of pleasure at the image of Aziraphale tasting himself.

They tangled themselves up in each others arms and were trading lazy kisses when Crowley hummed and reared his head back.

“What about you?”

“What about me?” Aziraphale asked, with his eyes still closed above a sleepy smile and his nails playing lightly at the small of Crowley’s back, scratching an itch only seconds after it had arisen.

“What would you like?” Crowley asked, trailing his fingers down Aziraphale’s front and wrapping them around the fat length of his cock, finding it full and hot against his palm.

“Oh, I’m nearly there already after all that. Just move your hand a little.”

“Like this?” Crowley whispered, tugging lightly while kissing him deeply, tasting himself and feeling the angel’s cock throb in his fist.

Aziraphale nodded and hummed and kissed him back with such enthusiasm that Crowley was caught off guard by the angel’s orgasm. He felt it as firmer, longer kisses that pulled harder on his tongue, and the wet heat of semen pulsing out against his stomach.

Crowley scooped the come off his skin and licked his hand clean--want and curiosity winning out over dignity and secrets.

Aziraphale was right: magnolias and the sea.

“And now sleep,” the angel said, pulling the blankets up and tucking them in behind Crowley’s back and shoulders.

“I knew you’d like it once you tried it.”

“It’s like wine,” Aziraphale smiled. 

“How so?” Crowley yawned.

“A perfect thing that can still be improved by the right company.”


End file.
